The Best Time to Prepare for a Crisis - Gerard Braud

Speaking with TJ Walker, dissecting the communication skills and practices of world class leaders.

I just went to Google and typed in media training and believe it or not, 999 million websites popped up. We live in an era when anybody can call themselves a media trainer and many people do. Our guest today is not one of these hacks who just throws out a shingle. He's someone who's been in the business for decades. He is tested, he is true. He's worked with thousands of clients in every continent that is populated by human beings. He has been also a reporter. His reports have been seen on NBC, cbs, cnn, BBC, you name it. He is one of the best in the business. Our guest today, Jared Breaux of Jared Breaux Communications. Jared, thanks for joining us.

It's good to be with you.

So how did you get into the business? Our background is a little different. I was never, I never really made it as a reporter. You were a successful reporter. How did that go?

Yeah, I did 15 years as a TV reporter. I was one of those kids who just always wanted to be a journalist and really had a great time for 15 years working my way up from small market to top 50 market and then getting to do some work for CNN. Back in the, in the late 80s and early 90s, CNN had an environmental division and environmental news was something that local news was doing. So while that trend was there, I was one of the first environmental reporters in the country. So that got me a lot of work with CNN and the Today show back then. So what I discovered in my career, first of all thinking, why do they have a 21 year old on TV. But then I started realizing I'm 21 years old, 22, 23, 24 years old. And every day grown ups, intelligent men and women, learned individuals, doctors, lawyers, engineers, say stupid things to me while a camera is rolling with a microphone in their face. And I put it on tv and I quickly realized they would stutter, they would stammer, they would shake. The sweat on the brow, the sweat under the eyes, the sweat across the lips. It was just so telling that these folks were so grossly uncomfortable doing what came naturally to me, which was being on TV and having a conversation. So as a young reporter I got a notebook and, and I started taking notes of what I saw and over the years came up with a nice collection. And about five years into my career I said, you know, one day TV's going to run out for me. There's always that point in time where you know that you just can't get paid what you want or you can't get to the next market that you want. And I will start a business training people on how to be more articulate and more intelligent, both in good interviews as well as in bad interviews. So after 15 years in TV, I quit before they could fire me because so many people in TV got paid off. We can't all be the pretty young thing forever. Well, and that's the thing is, you know, once you're 15 years into a career, you're 35, 36 years old, they can hire two people for what they they paid for you. So there are two 21 year olds that they can hire for 25,000 instead of the 50,000 that I was making. So at that point, I went to a large PR firm. It lasted for two years. That firm shut down and the next day I went out and started my own business. And I've been happy ever since. 19 was the April Fool's Day of 1996. So I'm 20 years on my own now.

I should say many of our listeners are familiar with your name because I reference you here on this podcast, often referencing the questions you pose on your broadcast. Which is a great video series that Jared puts out on YouTube where he puts out questions to professional communicators, things like, you know, who's the best spokesperson during a crisis and he lets other people in the industry answer it. So if you're thinking, I've heard of that name before and you're a regular listener, that's why we're happy to have him here with us today. Jared, you mentioned that even at 21, people were saying stupid things to you when you put a bright light and a camera in their face. Can you think of one that really stands out is just as soon as you heard it, you thought, wow, that guy or that gal really could regret saying that.

There's not a single sound bite that stands out because there were so many of them. And what, what strikes me about so many of the people that I would interview and now so many of the people that I train is people who make it to that CEO or executive level usually come from a financial or a technical background. So there are either accountants and CPAs and CFOs, chief financial officers, or they're engineers, or they come from a technical field. And what all of them do collectively is they get into what I'll call the weeds of giving too many details. And in the course, you know, if you've ever heard the adage, the devil's in the details, that's where they commit their sins, is when they get into details and they essentially go to confession on camera and tell a reporter with a camera and a microphone things that they would never verbalize to a, to a competitor. And I just think that is so foolish that they have no filter. They are overtly honest, honest to a fault, and completely don't get it. So there is no one that hit me as a reporter, as a trainer, I was more aware and more attuned to it. I remember as a trainer, there was one guy I was watching who was responsible for building a $700 million chemical plant. And one of the lessons I always teach in my media training class is the phrase, if you could attach a dollar to every word you say, would you make money or would you lose money? Because people tie their behavior to reputation. I like to go one step further and tie it to revenue. Well, this guy was asked, will his chemical plant pollute? And he was in a community that was very opposed to him, that had lots of environmental activism. And he said on camera, well, yes, this plant will pollute. We have permits from the state to make cost of chlorine, edc, VCM and pvc. And that license, that permit is essentially a license to pollute.

Oh, there's your sound.

Yeah. He was chief financial officer. He was analytical. He was too specific. And he answered the question directly with, without adding any context. And as a result, that $700 million facility was never built because of a 15 second soundbite. And that one just stands out and speaks volumes about the types of things that people say. And I will say he was media trained. Not by.

Not very well. Not very well.

He went to one of the best firms in the country. I affirm that you and I both respect in Houston and you know, Ammerman is the ammerman experience. And Mr. Ammerman kind of pioneered what you and I do. But it shows that when you go through media training class, it's not a bucket list thing. It's not something that you go, oh, I did that and I'm good to go. No, you have to practice and treat it like a sport where you practice, you have a great coach and you practice relentlessly. That's what great athletes do. And to do that or immediate people.

Let's analyze this particular scenario. Now, I'm assuming that he. You used the word pollute, which you certainly should have, but he repeated your word pollute being, of course a sound bite word, highly inflammatory, negative and action oriented. Is that the biggest blunder he made in that situation.

Well, for clarity, I wasn't the one who asked the question. It was a reporter. And. And I was watching this guy. He was a former client. I sat with him as he went through his media training. But there were a number of things. This is one of the best case studies that I use, and I'm the only one who has this video clip. And I never give it out because it would be embarrassing for him. And I kind of need to stop using it before catching me using it. Because I was speaking at a conference recently, and a guy came up and he goes, hey, I know so. And so I used to work with them in Houston. And I went, oh, time to quit showing. But to your question specifically, as long.

As you don't use the Bob Newhart video still, that's all I ask.

You know, the thing is, the Bob Newhart video is still good and funny anyhow. All right, so there were a bunch of sins. The background story on this guy is he wants to build in an industrial corridor between Baton Rouge and New Orleans that when I was an environmental reporter, I covered Greenpeace on the Rainbow warriors ship as they hung a banner from the Mississippi River Bridge in Baton Rouge, Rouge that said, gateway to Cancer Alley, brought to you by dow. And then the next day, they unfurled the banner that said, brought to you by Monsanto. And the next day, brought to you by Union Carbide. So this place became known as Cancer Alley. So you first of all have to know he wants to build a chemical plant in a place where people think chemical plants cause cancer. Now, the reality of the science is cancer rates are no higher in this region than anywhere else. Mortality is high because people smoke. So that's the background. It's a poor state. Lots of people smoke with no health care. So the background needs to be understood in order to understand the context of the question. And every person who hears a question in a media interview has to understand there is a question behind the question. So the question is, will this plant pollute at all? But based on the background I gave you, the question is, are you going to kill everyone with cancer? So let's refresh. Are you going to. His question was, will this plant pollute at all? He said, well, yes, we have permits from the state to make caustic chlorine, blah, blah, blah. If the question is, are you going to kill everybody with cancer? His answer is, yes, we have permits from the state to kill everybody with epileptal death. And what you have to do in a nanosecond and this is what makes it so hard and what people undervalue is when they go through media training and when they're getting ready to go into an interview is you have to know the question behind the question, which is are you going to kill everybody with cancer? But you now have to be able to add your own mental slight twist to it to add context. You have to really be thinking of an answer that is, people think you're going to kill them with cancer. What safeguards do you have in place? And you cannot spin. You still have to answer the question, but you have to add context to the answer. And my context to that would be in order for us to build this facility, we have to promise the people of this community in this state that we will be protective of human health and the environment. We have to protect the air, we have to protect the land, and we have to protect the water. Let me tell you how we're going to do that and then answer the question about how the $700 million that you're spending is going to build scrubbers that will remove 99.999% of all pollutants coming out to the air, how the water will be treated. And the water coming into the facility will be of a certain dirtiness coming from the Mississippi River. And by the time it's treated and goes back into the Mississippi river, it will be clean enough to drink. So the water leaving is cleaner than when it came in. And those are the types of things that you have to do to add context. So if we now go back and ask what safeguards are you going to have in place, the answer is true and it is honest and it adds context. And there is no spin. It simply gets to the heart of what needs to be communicated. Because that facility is not or would not have been a facility that was going to give everybody cancer any more than any other industrial facility. There are inherent risk of pollutants. And without getting into the issue of pollutants, the answer lacked context. If you answer a direct question with a direct answer, you are dead every time.

I love your way of reframing it to what is the question behind the question and getting the executive to think in those terms. What I always recommend is think about rewriting the question and answering an easier question, but doing it in a way where the reporter still feels satisfied and a fair minded person would not feel like you had dodged. So it's. I think you end up with the same thing but a slightly different frame. But I like your way of Putting it, how do you feel about. Because you were a reporter, when a reporter says, you know, are you polluting more? Yes or no, what do you think of the actual frame? Because I always teach people, look, the reporter can ask a question any way he or she wants, but you get to answer anyway. Don't feel the need to stick to their pre programmed answers. But what's your thought on that?

Ask me the question again. Let me process it. Is the plan yes or no?

Just any question where a reporter is sort of demanding a yes or no answer, a clear cut binary answer.

A lot of times what I do is state the obvious, which is a great preamble. So my state the obvious on this is it's not that simple that we can categorize it as a yes or no. We have to add context to it. And the context would be XYZ and I would provide the context and then at the end of providing the context, try to get to the answer. So, you know, there are a lot of things that are not cut and dry. Yes or no. Yeah. So if you, if you don't add context before the answer, you're dead.

If you.

One of those other gotcha questions or no, I don't even want to say retract that Jarrett did not say gotcha question. One of those other difficult questions to answer is can you guarantee that?

Whoa.

If you say no? Can't guarantee it, or yes, I can guarantee it, you're dead in the water. So one of the rules that I think you and I both teach our students and our executives in our media training classes is avoid absolutes. There are no absolute answers out of context. It's interesting because you can talk more and say things that are benign that create the impression that you're trying to be open and honest and give an answer. And many of these benign things, as long as you don't commit sins, they're never going to get used in the interview. So you can take your time to say, this is not something that can be answered in a yes or no question. It has to have context to it.

You are listening to Speaking with TJ Walker, the show where we interview world class communicators and dissect exactly what they do, what they don't do, and how they got to develop their level of expertise. Our special guest is Jared Breaux of Jared Breau of Communications. He is a world class communicator. He's recognized as a certified speaking professional by the National Speakers Association. He's seen as a real thought leader in the Whole arena of crisis communications. In fact, his crisis communications plans have been implemented by the IRS, Library of Congress, the U.S. military, you name it. And he's very different, frankly, from a lot of reporters from the 70s and 80s who said, oh, this media training thing looks simple. I'll launch in. Oh, let me do that. That looks like easy money. I see TJ and Jared making the bucks. Let me do that. I say that you're different, Jared, because I have encountered so many reporters who, when they try to make the switch to becoming a trainer, they still have the reporter's hat on. So they end up just lecturing the client. And the lecture consists of, don't dodge the question. Don't tell me the name of your book. Don't repeat your message. It's boring. Just answer the question. Their thought process is just about how to make it a better experience for the reporter. And that's a part of the process, but it's obviously not the whole thing. How did you make the transition? What was sort of the biggest adjustment for you, going from the pure journalism world to the training world? And do you even agree with my assessment of the common blunders of other journalists?

I completely agree with you, and I'm so glad that you called that out. I know many of our friends in public relations belong to the Public Relations Society of America, prsa. They belong to ibc, the International association of Business Communicators, the Southern Public Relations Federation, and chapters all around the world. And you and I have spoken at many of these chapters, and we've even been there in those days when these chapters have Media Day and they bring in a team of reporters who, you know, they want to get inside the heads of these reporters. And the reporters do the same thing that the newbie media trainers do, which is just be honest with us. Tell us everything you know. And I want to be like a Secret Service agent who is in slow motion jumping in front of the bullet and yelling, no. The art of talking to a reporter is to give a reporter what they need on your terms. It is not to go to confession. A reporter wants you to go to confession. The way I made the transition was the fact, as I mentioned earlier, that at a young age I noticed it is stupid for an executive to tell me what he just said on camera. Don't go to confession with me. Give me a sound bite. And as we move further into. As we move further into the evolution of media and social media and the Internet, we have to realize the media is less important today than ever before. The Pay is getting lower again. The number of human beings who have jobs in this sector are getting lower again. And therefore reporters don't have time to do investigative work as they may have been able to do in the 70s and the 80s and the 90s. And it is all about wham, bam, how fast can I get it out? Give me something, give me something I can use. And that creates an opportunity for, for us to teach people how to speak in the reporter's inverted pyramid. So if you've ever been to journalism school, or if you've been in one of my classes or your classes, you've learned that there's an inverted pyramid style that reporters write in. If you pick up the paper, there is a headline, there is a synopsis sentence that is called the lead in TV and news jargon, and then there are quotes. And if you can teach someone to speak in a headline and to create a good synopsis sentence, which is what's going to create the context for the interview and then to give a kick butt soundbite quote. That's the essence of what a reporter needs to create their story. And therefore you're giving them what they need. They don't need all the details. So if a reporter gets fired from TV and thinks, yes, I'm going to go be a media trainer tomorrow, and they haven't thought through what's in the best interest of their client, they're doing that client a disservice. They're teaching that client essentially how to commit suicide in an interview by teaching what their old Persona needed, what their old person wanted, rather than, you know, as. It's kind of like being a prosecuting attorney and a defense attorney, right? So when you're a reporter, you're the prosecutor, you're prosecuting that person with the types of questions you're asking. When you're a media trainer, you have to be in the posture of helping them defend their reputation, not teaching them to lie, not teaching them to spin, not teaching them to avoid the truth, but how to put context around the truth.

Great analogy.

The biggest thing that's come to me after doing this 20 years, the more you teach it and the more I actually try to make sure I'm doing a certain number of interviews a year so that I can practice my own skills. The more I've realized that the essence of what media trainers have been teaching for the past 30 to 40 years, missing something really huge that I've had it, which is a preamble sentence that provides context for every interview, it doesn't mean that preamble is ever going to get used. But a lot of times that preamble becomes the lead of the story. And I've gotten very good at writing these things and I spend a lot of time before I get to media training. People think, oh, media training can be expensive. Well, what you're paying for is the preparation for the media training and the writing of preambles on my part. And having your message system, Jared, you.

Know what else is expensive? Having your 700 million chemical plant where you've already spent 50 million in permits canceled because of stupid quotes. That's expensive too.

Yeah, if only everybody realized that and.

You'Re more in touch with this than I was. But to me that the all time example of expensive non media Training is the CEO of BP. During the Gulf crisis, their stock price dropped $35 billion in six months. In part because I think of how he mishandled it. Let's table that conversation. You've unpacked so many nuggets here where I really want to dive much deeper. Sound bite. Let's talk about sound bites in a minute. Because in my experience of having done media training now for 32 years, it's the single most misunderstood or least understood aspect of this game. And a lot of people, a lot of executives have been taught, you know, smile on the camera, move, have a message, narrow it down to top three, stick to your messages. But they don't really know the difference between a message point and a sound bite. And there's a lot of intentional confusion put out there by the media. Media big shots like Peggy Noonan has famously said, oh, you can never prepare or know in advance a sound bite. It just sort of mystically appears, which I think is complete nonsense. But the problem I see with many journalists and even media trainers is they are so instinctively good at framing things in sound bites that they're lousy teachers. It's like Michael Jordan teaching you to be a basketball player really isn't worth much because you want Dean Smith coaching you, not Michael Jordan. He knows it so well. So I have my own techniques. But I want to know, if I come to your class, how do you teach me how to take a message and turn it into a sound bite?

The first thing that I have observed is what has been done in media training for decades is wrong. Teaching people three key messages creates a lot of ad lib. And it is the ad lib of an interview where you commit the sin that eventually causes a noose to go around your neck. And there's A sudden fall and you stop breathing and die a thousand deaths right there on air or in the paper the next day or on radio.

By the way, the last 20 seconds of what you said, about a dozen great sound bites.

So here's what happens in most media training classes. The trainer walks in and does what they were trained to do, which is, okay, so you're a hospital, and here are your three key messages. Wellness is important. We have the best doctors and we have the best equipment. So when you do the interview, talk about the best doctors, talk about the best wellness and talk about the best equipment, and they give them no other words. So you're teaching them to remember to ad lib about these three things. My approach is going to be to write well worded sentences that I expect them to learn and use verbatim, put it in their own speech pattern, change the words ever so slightly. But I believe every word has to be parsed. It has to be conversational, it has to be free of jargon and free of acronyms. And, and it has to be a phrase that that executive can say every day of their life, that they can say in every speech, whether it's to the Kiwanis Club or the American Hospital association and any place in between, phrases that they can use every day that are true every day. So that's where I start with adding context. So I might say the goal of St. Mary's Hospital is to be there when you need us. We're here to treat those little crummy things like the flu or a trip to the emergency room. We're here to treat those major illnesses such as fighting cancer with our world class medical staff and the best equipment possible. But we're also here to make sure you don't have to come to our hospital through our wellness programs that added context to everything this hospital does. And every hospital does the very same thing. And those are the three things. Treat the crummy stuff, treat the big stuff, keep you from getting sick. Most doctors and hospital executives would refuse to say a phrase like treat the crummy stuff. But how does the average person at home talk? Do they go, I'm sorry, I think I have an acute illness this morning? No, they say, wow, I feel crummy today. I don't feel right. I need to go to the doctor. So the first thing I'm going to teach people is that your opening statement has to be verbatim and it has to be repeatable and it has to be in the language of the audience. And keep in mind the Average person who watches TV has a sixth grade education. And people who read in print want to read at an 8th grade reading level. So it's not deep and it's fast and easy to consume in a world of information overload. So the first thing I'm going to do is really set up the three things. And so what I've done in that opening statement is I hit on all three of those talking points. But now I'm going to if you visualize a tree, picture that as a tree trunk and visualize three big branches. And I'm now going to do three on top of three. So the branch about the crummy stuff. I'm going to give three examples of simple things that the most people would come to our hospital for that are those little things. I'm now going to give three examples of reasons people would come to our hospital for three major illnesses. And I'm going to give three great tips on wellness. So I can either talk about the crummy stuff, talk about the major illness, or talk about wellness. I can talk about one, I can talk about all, but I'm each going to create verbatim sentences to get them started. And the quotes are going to be embedded in those sentences. And I am manipulating not only the reporter, I'm manipulating the interview and da da da da. I am manipulating the edit because I'm speaking in headlines, I am speaking in a lead, and I'm speaking in quotes. And I'm virtually guaranteeing that what I said is going to get used.

How do you get your clients to actually memorize statements verbatim? Because I find other than professionally trained Broadway actors, most people have an extraordinarily difficult time doing that. I know myself. I've sometimes been asked to do commercials or short segments for spots in movies that went nowhere. And I had an extraordinarily difficult time memorizing even 12 seconds of text. Yet I can do a hundred videos without having to do a retake or a single edit in a day if I'm just talking. So I'm wondering, what magic sauce do you have to get people's memories to work better? Because also when they're nervous, in a real interview, it's even harder to have good recall.

The secret is don't memorize. The secret is to internalize. And the difference between the two is that when you're memorizing, the words are in your head. When you internalize, the words are in your heart. And if they're in your heart, they're going to be true. The other key is the phrases have to be simply worded in colloquial language that can be used every day. So it is the repetition of giving them phrases, phrases that they can say every day of their life, that allows them to internalize it. A good way to use an analogy to explain this is think of what it's like when you tell jokes. And the first time you hear friend tell a joke and it's really funny and your friend gets a lot of laughs, you try to tell the joke to your friends and the punch line isn't quite there and the timing isn't quite fair and the laughs aren't as big. And then the next time you tell the joke, it gets a little funnier. And then the third time you tell the joke, boom, the repetition is there and you're getting a big laugh. Likewise, look at comedians stand up comedians. You know, Robin Williams, God bless his soul, would still go to improv clubs. Jay Leno, great comedians still go to improv. And that's because there are shows on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Saturday, two shows every night. Wednesday night, the crowd isn't that sharp, although it could be some scouts checking you out. But the fact is, you can bomb on Wednesday and realize that your bomb led to bigger laughs than the original joke. So you rewrite your material and critique it and tweak it a little bit. So on Thursday, it's a little better. Still rough. But by the end of that fourth show, two on Wednesday, two on Thursday, you now have some good repetition and you kill it on the two shows on Friday and kill it on two shows on Saturday. It's the repetition of internalizing it. So if a person does media training the day before their interview, that's not good. You need to a plan a good media training class before you need it and then do refresher classes once a year at a minimum, but also do a refresher on the topic before every interview. So my secret is to write words that also have a logic to them. The reason you can be spontaneous is because you have that reporter's mind of remembering things in chronological order. And you can be good at it. And I can be good at it. I'm better logged in than I am reading the teleprompter. But when you're preparing for an interview, even I write down the phrases that I'm going to say and nail. I've got a stack of, you know, I don't know where they are anymore, but somewhere in a file cabinet, a stack of bar napkins, because that's where I would write my quotes down is on napkins. And when I had to do interviews or when I was training someone. So it's how to give them a true phrase that is in ordinary language that they can say every day and that they can get a bunch of repetition before they actually need to say it.

If you'd like more of Jared Breaux insights, you should do what I do. Go to Twitter. Follow him. B R A U D. That's gbro, which is spelled B R A U D. That's a Cajun name. French Cajun, I'm assuming French name.

Jared and bro are both French pronunciations, which really makes my life hard because it looks like Gerard Broad.

Okay. But our listeners are very familiar with your name since we reference it here. Not just your Twitter, but your YouTube series. Now that, that fascinates me for a couple of reasons. One, you've got good content. But two, I am constantly amazed at so called public speaking experts, media training experts, even YouTube experts. And you go to their YouTube channel and they have no videos. I mean, I.

That's true.

And look, I love prsa, iabc, all those others and I'm a regular trainer at a lot of those places. But I constantly get emails where someone says, you know, come to this, you know, $300 webinar where this YouTube expert is going to teach us all about making viral videos. Well, the first thing I always do is I go to YouTube and I check the person's account. And 99.9% of the time when I do that, inevitably they have six videos. Nothing's been posted in two years. They've got five subscribers and they clearly are not demonstrating this at any level. Even media trainers, I know if I invite them onto shows in the past something, you know, I'm not top of my form or I need a haircut or this or that, they come up with excuses. You're actually doing it. Week in and week out, I see new videos from you. And folks, if you want to find this easiest way is to just go to brocommunications.com b r a u d communications.com you'll see the link to the YouTube channel in your broadcast. You pose interesting, thoughtful questions to people who care about communication. You then actually listen to other people and incorporate their answers. Tell us more about the series, what you've hoped to accomplish and how it's been rolling out well for years.

You know, I love doing TV and I love doing radio and I admire what you're doing here that you have A podcast. I always wanted to do more podcasting and I haven't ever done it. And years ago I started a couple of podcasts and I called it the Brocast, because if you mispronounce bro, it's broadcast. So simple crash. That's how the name came to be. But, you know, I had some false starts. I would do videos now and then, and I've got to give credit to a guy named Jay Baer. Jay Baer is a social media guru. He has a very successful series called Convince and Convert. So if you're into social media, I love and hate social media. For some brands, for some companies, it's an appropriate fit. For others, it's not a fit for my business in public relations and crisis communications, it is a fit to the PR community. And I was talking to Jay one day and he says, Jared, there are 52 weeks in a year. Think of 52 questions to ask the audience. And that's going to create some really phenomenal engagement because people on social media by nature disagree and love when you ask their opinion. And I immediately, I was in the back of the room. He and I were speaking together at a workshop in New York City with a buddy of yours, Jess Toddfeld. We were all at this New York media lab together and I sat in the back of the room and wrote down 104 questions, which gave me two years of questions to ask people. And I set up a green screen in a loft at my house. I bought a Nikon camera, a single lens reflex camera, to be a tech nerd on it. But it's got video capability. You and I have been in video production on and off and have cameras for our media training. So I set up a studio at my house with a green screen and I hired a high schooler. So that's the background story about what goes on behind the scenes. What goes on in front of the scenes is every Monday I ask a question and we put it out to the world on Twitter, on LinkedIn and on YouTube. So you can also go to my Twitter account, gbrobro, and there will be lots of links to the Brocast video. But I wanted to see what other people think. I have very strong opinions. I'm very much a maverick in what I do. I look as you saw, as we talked about earlier, not as you saw, but as we talked about earlier. I don't do media training, key messages the way other people do it, because I look at what they're doing and I go, no, that's not working. You taught them three Key messages. They ad libbed and they said something stupid on CNN that didn't work. Whose fault is it? It's the trainer's fault. So I don't want to be at fault. It's not the spokesperson's fault if they have a crummy trainer. So I want it to, you know, I'm very much if.

If it is their fault if they hired that person and they did it because that person was the cheapest and was willing to do it for $500 and a cup of coffee.

So what I did with Brocast is I looked at all these questions and I'm very much the maverick and I have very strong opinions on how certain things should be done. So a typical question might be, in a crisis, who should be your spokesperson? And you'd be surprised at the traction a question like that gets. Because some people think the PR person should be the spokesperson, some people think the subject matter expert should be the spokesperson, some people think the CEO should be the one and only spokesperson. And it was quite a joy to see the engagement that first people responded to my question, but then they get into intellectual debate with one another based on what a colleague might say on LinkedIn or what a colleague might say on YouTube or what a colleague might say on Twitter. So I wanted to do it, get brains turned, to get the wheels turning, to get brains thinking and to have some open discussions about what is best.

Practice and Time out. One second, Jared, because you just mentioned two words that get bandied about a lot of questions. Engagement. And every PR person and every communication person constantly hears, oh, don't just use your social media for a distribution channel. Don't do that, don't do that to engage your people. Engage people. Well, you are literally engaging people by asking questions and they're answering them. They just can't. I can't resist.

I know you've been doing a great job. You're doing exactly what I wanted people to do. Put up your own video. I mean, I love when I see your video that says, our friend Jared Breaux at the Brocast asked this today and here's my take on it. I love that.

And too many people in this profession, and I'm guilty myself, we talk a good game of, oh, it's about engagement. It's about engagement. And then too often we just push out our own stuff and it lands with a thought. I confess I'm guilty of that. I don't ask people questions as often as I should. Certainly on Twitter, I don't do as good a job of that. So you're a good role model for a lot of community leaders.

I have to thank Jay Baer. You know, Jay was the one who says you don't have to be the smartest guy in the room, you just have to ask the smartest question.

Which question has generated the most engagement, the most controversy, the most tweets?

The one I mentioned about the spokesperson was one of them that got a lot of engagement. I asked a question about, describe your crisis communications plan. How long should your crisis communications plan be? I'm a real maverick in the world of crisis communications plans. Most people have a six page plan. I have a 50 page plan with 500 pages of pre written news releases that I deliver to people in a day. So it was interesting because again, as the maverick, I look at people screw up in a crisis and I go, that's because your plan wasn't actually a real plan. Your plan was a list of standard operating procedures. So when I engage with people about how their plan is written, what's in their plan, that gets a lot of engagement. When I ask people to describe their key messages, that gets a lot of engagement. It's those often sensitive things to pit the PR person against the lawyer or against the CEO, and it's to ask questions about the pain, problem and predicament that PR people face. You know, what is the struggle that the average PR person is facing right now? And can we a ask the community and get some best practices so it becomes kind of like a group therapy or counseling session? Can we do that? Can we also create a video that ultimately they can go back and watch with their team or watch with their executive and go, Mr. CEO, I know you think you should be the only spokesperson in the crisis, but Jared just did this video that says the first person out in the first hour of a crisis should be the PR person because you, the CEO, should be managing the crisis and managing the business and managing the crisis management team. And then he says in the second hour a subject matter expert should come out and that in some crises, the CEO never needs to come out because if it's a small crisis, the presence of the CEO makes it seem bigger than it is. But certainly if there is death, destruction, harm to the environment, harm to the community, if people have been injured or killed, the CEO now needs to come out as the person expressing the maximum empathy. So what I do in a video like that is we aggregate opinions. Then I add my take to the opinions that I see. But it gives them not only the engagement tool during the week. It gives them best practices of their colleagues and it gives them a I told you so video to go to the boss with to say can we have our own discussion internally about our policies and procedures and perhaps what we need to retool right here and let.

Me stop being a hypocrite for a moment and practice what I preach because we're three fourths of the way done with the program and I haven't done what I should have done earlier, which is to remind listeners if you have questions about public speaking, media training, crisis communications, if you post them on the blog or Facebook or wherever you're hearing or experiencing this, then I'll answer that typically in our Weekend Edition program when I don't have guests. So post your questions. You can also email them to tjediatrainingworldwide.com and all this information is in the show notes. If you have suggestions for question other great guests like Jared, let me know. We are always looking for great guests. And as soon as you finish listening to this show, do me one little favor and just send a tweet to Jared and thank him for his appearance. If there's something he said or he had a question for him, let him know about that. And feel free to participate in his brocast question series. You can find him on Twitter G B R A U D. Jared, there's two questions I'm dying to ask you about crisis communications. One is how do you balance the need for thoroughness with the fact that in a crisis and it's three in the morning and there's a fire, complexity can be your enemy because it's too overwhelming to go up either on a shelf or in a computer document to to sift through 500 pages. So I wanted you to talk about that first. But the second big question is I have found PR people can talk all day long about this plan, that plan strategy. But then a crisis hits and the CEO has to make decisions. And quite often there's the low level PR person who's maybe 26, making $39,000 a year giving perfectly good advice that you or I would give. And there's the 50 year old chief legal counsel who's making a million dollars a year. The CEO's making $3 million a year. They belong to the same country club, they use the same tailor. And the lawyer, the chief of legal counsel is saying my advice is no comment. And that's who the CEO listens to in part because there's such a difference in stature within many corporations.

Okay, so what you've described is the pain problem in predicament of pr. And if we look at the pain problem in predicament, then we have to figure out how do we solve this. And the first way to solve it is to recognize that the worst time to deal with a crisis is in a crisis. And the best time to deal with that crisis is on a clear sunny day. And what I developed for my folks were two things that were really three things in my process that revolutionized what my clients were able to do and the buy in they're able to get from the executives. There's the old saying that an expert is somebody who comes from, from 50 miles away and you pay them. And many people bring you and I in to train them when they could be training their own spokespeople.

Right?

But you and I are, let's be honest. No, I agree. The fact is, if you and I do our. Let's step back for a second. If you and I are doing our jobs right as trainers, we're willing to get fired. We're willing to be enough of a hard ass on that person that's in that class that we bring them to failure and bring them to success and let them screw up in private so they don't screw up in public. Who's going to do that to their boss without fear of getting fired? So that's the first reason to bring in outside experts. So when I get brought in as an outside expert to help someone write a crisis communications plan, there are three things I'm going to do. One of them is engage with the executives in a vulnerability assessment to scare the pants off of them, to help them visualize everything that could go wrong, from the firing explosion with fatalities to the natural disaster tornado that destroys the facility, to the smoldering crisis of one of the top executives got caught with a hooker last night while another one was downloading kiddie porn. All of these are crises that not only hurt the reputation and revenue of an organization. So step one one is to scare them to death and have that come to Jesus moment, if I may use that colloquial expression where you come to that realization that you know what things could get really bad. Second is knowing that reporters, or I mean knowing that executives are going to over analyze a new statement that could have been written by a Pulitzer Prize winner. I have to analyze, go to the root cause or root cause analysis and figure out why. Why do they feel compelled as engineers and accountants to change what a professional writer wrote? And it's usually because of commas and semantics. So if they fight over, should we call it an incident? No, let's call it an event. Well, it's a crisis, we can call it a crisis. No, just call it an incident. And at the end the lawyer comes in and says, don't call it a fire. Say there was an incendiary event that caused an escalation of thermal activity. And what I do is I look at all this BS and I go, you know what? I can write a news release today that has the appropriate fill in the blank and multiple choice sentences without commas, short declarative sentences, sentences that are phrased as sound bites. I can build a document that has thought through every question that a reporter will ask you in a news conference so that when you take it and read this script, and I mean read the script, not try to memorize it or try to wing it, but read the script, the words are parsed, they're crisp, they tell the reporter what they need to know. At the end of the news conference, there are almost no questions because you've proactively answered their questions and it has non speculative answers to a speculative question. Question, that's a big mouthful. What that means is the reason a lawyer doesn't want the spokesperson to talk is because they're going to speculate and that speculation is going to give fire to the plaintiff's attorney and that's going to cost you more money when it goes to trial. So for example, if you laid off 10 people and then you had a shooting, so you laid off 10 people last week, you had a shooting at the workplace this week. Reporter comes in and says, who do you think did it? The spokesperson says, we don't know yet. The reporter follows up with, you laid off 10 people last week. Could it have been one of them? The spokesperson analytical thinks, well, obviously it could have been one of them. It could have been any human being on the face of the earth. So they say, yeah, it could have been one of them. And the headline is Laid off Worker may have been shooter. My document. If you read it, you're going to be trained to say it would be inappropriate for us to speculate on that. We'll wait for an investigation to tell us what happened, how it happened, how it can happen, how we keep it from happening again. Follow up question. Yes, but you laid off 10 people last week, could it have been one of them? Train that spokesperson, say it would be inappropriate for us to speculate on that again. We'll wait for an investigation to tell us what happened, how it happened, how we keep that from happening again. And notice the parsing of the word it would be inappropriate. I'm not saying we don't want to speculate. I'm not saying I can't speculate. Those aren't good answers. It would be inappropriate is the best parsing of the word. So a lawyer and an executive can look at the hundred pre written news releases that I've created. And they're easy to find because they're in alphabetical order and they have tabs. So it's easy to search for these documents. It's easy to find. They can read them on a clear sunny day. And I have never, ever, ever had a lawyer change a word on any document in my plan or in those news releases. Now let's jump to the plan that should be.

Sorry to interrupt. That should be your thesis headline on your sales page for your crisis communications. Because I think that's what would sell you to PR people, because they're tired of dealing with lawyers. Some of my best friends are lawyers. But. But that's a great testament to how you've crafted it.

Well, the next thing would be the plan. If most people look at their crisis communications plan, it's six to 12 pages of standard operating procedure that somebody did so they could get their company bonus. And it says things like gather information. Well, la de da da. Did we really have to write the word gather information on a piece of paper? The next one is going to say, consider what your key messages would be. Duh, that's Public Relations Class 101. Did we really need to write that down? Were we going to forget it? And it says stupid stuff like that. Consider who your spokesperson should be. No, today is not the day to consider who your spokesperson should be. You should have an addendum in your binder that tells you who your top five subject matter experts should be. So I get obviously excited about this and I have to calm down, but I get really mad when I see PR people doing what their forefathers did which failed them. And then I get people who say, well, you know, every crisis is different. So you can't have one crisis communications plan that fits every crisis BS with a big capital BS and five exclamation points. Here's the secret that I've never told an audience before and I'm going to say it right here. TJ on your podcast, the difference is described and handled in the pre written news release. But in every crisis you must gather information, confirm it with your crisis management team, create a news release and Then send that news release out to the web, email it to the media, send it to all of your employees, send it to your stakeholders, and if necessary for a news conference, read it as a statement. One statement goes to everybody. But the sequence that a public relations person takes never changes. It's pretty much rinse, lather and repeat. So what I did when I created my plan and the first version was done in 1996, it's registered with the Copyright Office in Washington D.C. and what I do for people now is I let them buy a license to what I've created over the past 20 years. So, you know, for less than $10,000 you can have something that I've put 2 million man hours of labor into over 20 years. But the plan is so simple that anyone who can read can execute it. And you mentioned early on that when the crisis is happening, it's three in the morning, we're groggy or our best friend got killed, killed. And there's anxiety and that's the pain, problem, predicament that I solve in my plan, which is, you know what, open this binder and Even though it's 50 pages, it's 50 pages, single sided, 16 point type, line and a half. So you know, you could condense it into less pages, but you can read it when you don't have your glasses on. And if you follow it, you can't screw up. Just follow the sequence, ask the questions at the right time. It's going to tell you exactly what questions to ask so that you're not forgetting to ask something important. It's letting you have situational awareness for the entire crisis management team. And that team can put out the fire if they need to put out the fire. Let another team do that while your team does the communications. And one final point, Every organization needs three plans. A risk management business continuity plan to restore the supply chain, an emergency plan for when there's an emergency. And when any of those plans are activated, the communication plan is activated. But if somebody is downloading kiddie porn, the risk management plan never gets used and the emergency operations plan never gets open, but the crisis communications plan does. The crisis communications plan plan should be used and will be used more frequently than any other plan. But what happens is corporate executives expect the PR people to simply be a wizard. There's so much denial among leaders or people who should be leaders that we'll just get everybody in the room and figure it out. And most of the people who think they can figure it out are going to take four to five hours to put out a news release and none of them know what Twitter is because they're not on Twitter and none of them realize the power of Facebook because they're not on Facebook. So off my soapbox and back to you.

Jared, you mentioned earlier that often people don't really need to hire us. They could do it themselves. They should be able to do it themselves. They don't. I agree with you completely. Part of what I try to do in any training is true change the culture of an organization so that nobody, I tell people, I said if you ever let any of your colleagues do an interview and you haven't rehearsed with them on video, I think you're guilty of malpractice because you just walk into the room and you pull out your cell phone and to me that's in.

A moment, I'm going to want your.

Final tip on how you encourage people to do this. But I mean I did a presentation training that this morning with a client. In fact it was my most important client of all. It was my three year old daughter. She had show and tell today and.

She just started tell you how funny it is because I used to do the same thing with my daughters for their social studies projects.

How did it turn out?

They were first place in the state. Every time they did they would like kill it every time.

That's fantastic because I mean she's in I guess pre preschool and she has to do a show and tell. We did it the last two weeks and I all I did was say let's just practice what you say. I recorded it for 30 seconds and then all I did was a hundred percent positive reinforcement on the things she did. Well, I want to make her like speaking and feel good about I'm not ripping her up and telling her 29 things she did. It's 100% positive. But you know what, that really isn't any different than how I do the first two hours of a typical media training with a grizzled 65 year old executive. So I just want to know final tips in our last few moments you have on how people can get either their clients, their colleagues or themselves to practice on video more.

Wow.

Wow.

It's so much easier as you mentioned, because you can use a cell phone and an iPad. I mean when I started out media training, I was schlepping a $65,000 beta cam on an airplane and putting it in the overhead rack with a 25 pound tripod. And now I can travel with an iPad and a $29 microphone and set it up on a, on a $50 tripod that I can get from, from B and H in New York and try to travel in one suitcase. And the reality is there is no excuse for not practicing more. You either practice or you fail. And many high powerful people are in denial about their ability and about how much they need to practice. And they don't value it. People undervalue pr and PR people tend not to push back. I always tell PR people if you're not willing to get fired or quit every day, you're doing a disservice to yourself and to your company. So the ability to practice on a regular basis is important. Certainly I recommend bringing in somebody like you or I from the outside. Not because I'm trying to make money from you, I'm trying to save you money from the 700 million dollar mistake. I'm trying to, trying to be fired so that you can be the hero. I always tell my clients if this goes really well, you take credit. If this goes really badly, you blame me and you fire me. I don't care if we never work together again because I'm going to have other people who are going to bring me in. That's just the reality of life. So once a professional like you or I have really, really put them through the wringers and we've thought this through. You've been doing this 32 years. I've been doing it 20 years. Now we understand strategies and behaviors in a way that many people who are in their younger years haven't. But even a lot of my veteran friends who are 30 years in the business still bring me in because they know that I can get the CEO to do something they can't. I will say this. When I do an interview with somebody in media training, it is only that person and me in the room. If it's a class of four, the other three leave the room because there are private conversations and confessions that those people will have with me before the group comes back in. That allows me to create a brilliant observation and a brilliant solution for them so that we solve their problem in private and let them mess up in private so they never mess up in public. And then you, the PR person can then do the refreshers based on what they learned and polish them. And it's got to be a working relationship between the trainer, the PR team and the spokespeople who are being trained. It's a three way relationship. And ultimately in life it all comes down to having good relationships. The one other Thing I would say is find a person who is a good fit. There are some people I don't want to work with because we simply aren't a good fit. I've been in a room with trainers who simply compliment them. Oh, that was so good. Oh, you should have done this. In fact, that happened at that same workshop in New York. I referenced earlier to where the trainer who was on stage at the time told somebody, you did such a great job. And I'm thinking, that was absolutely horrible. I would never hire you as a media trainer. And you're one of my best friends. And I took that guy in the back of the room afterwards and I said, bruce, man, you sucked up there. Don't you ever do that, do this, this and this. And if you ever get called for an interview, you call me and I'm going to write your opening line for you. He called me that night, sent me a text. I'm in New York watching Jersey Boys, drinking whiskeys and Sprite because I love highballs. And I went back to my hotel that night and wrote for him his opening line. He was on Fox and Friends the next morning and he nailed the interview. You got to be honest with people and you got to give them the tools that they need and then help them practice.

Well, I'm afraid I have to be honest with you, Jared. Number one, we're out of time. Number two, you're a great guest. Thanks for being with us today. The website is brocommunications.com you can also go to YouTube and check out the brocast. It's all linked to in the show notes. Jared, thanks for being our guest today.

Great being here. Thanks for having a great podcast. I love your program. Thanks for listening to Speaking with TJ Walker where the communication skills and practices.

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